BeWifi lets you steal your neighbor’s bandwidth when they’re not using it

By aggregating wireless signals, Telefonica is trying to make unreliable Wi-Fi better.

What if, when you were up at a ridiculous hour Skyping your relatives in Australia, you could borrow unused bandwidth from your sleeping neighbors to make your own broadband connection faster and stronger?

High up in a glass tower in Barcelona, Telefonica's research and development team has been attempting to tackle exactly this question. The solution they have come up with, BeWifi, is a technology that gathers bandwidth from local Wi-Fi routers in order to enhance the connection of the users that happen to be on the Internet at exactly that moment in time.

Telefonica started to research the idea, without making changes to existing infrastructure, in 2008. "We were exploring what would be the opportunities for bringing the peer-to-peer and sharing phenomenon into this arena," Pablo Rodriguez, Telefonica's Director of Product Innovation and Research, told Wired.co.uk.

"Your broadband connection is not used 100 percent of the time," he explained. "If you bring [connections] together smartly and manage to aggregate the spare capacity...[it's] a much better customer experience."

The way Telefonica has made this happen in a practical way is to build its own routers that can be installed in houses within a neighborhood. So far these have had to be installed by engineers, but the next generation are plug-and-play, and eventually all that will be needed is an over-the-air software update to customers' existing routers. According to Rodriguez, the software "creates a mesh to aggregate the capabilities [of the routers]." Pooling all of the bandwidth from these routers allows anyone within the network to take advantage of it at home, and they can also connect to any BeWifi network they come across on their mobile devices when out and about.

"From a technical point of view it's not trivial because you have to develop the software that is on the router to make sure that the router not only communicates with itself but also communicates in a mesh way with the other routers that are in the neighborhood," says Rodriguez.

The technology's only limitation is the actual Wi-Fi bandwidth available, he says. "What you need is some densely populated area—it could either be a small village or it could be a high-rise building, but you need to have some sort of community that is able to share the bandwidth."

Rodriguez is keen to emphasize that security has been a priority from the beginning and the network is completely safe and private. Homeowners will also always get priority over their own bandwidth, he says. "You always get at least what you paid for, but potentially you're going to get a lot more."

He does concede though that Telefonica needs to work out a way to deal with customers within a single network that are perhaps on different tariffs and are contributing more to the mesh than others. He suggests a system whereby the bandwidth a customer gets is somehow proportional to the capacity they bring into the system. This hasn't been a problem so far because the BeWifi pilots Telefonica has run so far in Catalonia have all involved households on the same tariff. By testing the technology in the market early on, Telefonica now has a better understanding of potential customer adoption and how it might scale the project further, Rodriguez explained.

When Telefonica advertised the first trial, over 1,000 people signed up in the north of Barcelona during the first week. "We were able to double the speed that customers were getting and we had some very interesting feedback," said Rodriguez, detailing that some people couldn't run Skype and YouTube at the same time before using BeWifi.

Through the pilot, Telefonica discovered that BeWifi also offered some unplanned benefits. One case involved a customer whose home broadband was suffering an outage. "His Internet connection came down and he was going through another Wi-Fi router from a nearby home and he didn't even notice it was happening," Rodriguez explains.

Another unexpected finding was that people do not use the Internet heavily all at exactly the same time—a concern at the beginning of the trial—but in sporadic bursts. This means there is nearly always some spare bandwidth available to be recycled.

Telefonica is currently looking towards developing economies and its huge customer base of over 200 million households in 14 countries in South America as the places in which BeWifi could have a real impact.

"Where it provides the most benefit is in areas where the connectivity [is poor]," says Rodriguez. "Where you need to do more with less, that's where technology helps you."

97 Reader Comments

Working with those who don't consistently hit their data caps. (though I suppose the bandwidth is shared amongst all those in an area, and for some it would mean increased usage caps).Those with unlimited bandwidth.In apartments and highrise areas where the population density is greater.

Wow now that is cool. Bell Rogers could you have a look? There is a way for isps to innovate that actually makes customers life's better and doesn't try to suck more money out of them by artificially restraining their service.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

surprisingly enough <sarcasm> the one German telco that wants in on the usage caps racket is the deutsche Telekom. Not only have they been infected by their ownership of T-Mobile usa but they also provide an ip television service. So it looks like the usual play of inconveniencing potential future competitors like Netflix and bolstering their own services. Rogers, bell I am looking at you Bastards. Usage caps should be simply illegal they are clearly uncompetitive. Regulators grow a spine.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

The article mentions that security is a priority, and that's great. My question would be, since you can potentially be prosecuted for illegal activities being performed by someone else who is on your network, how can that be traced if dozens or even hundreds of people are using this shared connection? What protections would you as a consumer have if others that are now using your bandwidth use the shared network as a way to hide what they're going?

"Your broadband connection is not used 100 percent of the time," he explained. "If you bring [connections] together smartly and manage to aggregate the spare capacity...[it's] a much better customer experience."

This is impossible! I was told that there is only so much internet for each of us!

Data caps exist over here at least in the UK, I've been on a capped connection for years but it's by choice as I would rather have an honest isp that sets reasonable caps rather than ones that claim to be unlimited yet apply aggressive traffic shaping to the connection if you download heavily.

Wow now that is cool. Bell Rogers could you have a look? There is a way for isps to innovate that actually makes customers life's better and doesn't try to suck more money out of them by artificially restraining their service.

I wouldn't put too much faith into anything Telefonica does. Even if their research division comes up with interesting ideas, their Internet service is known as one of the worst (if not outright the worst) in the markets they operate.

If I had to guess, I would say they want this technology to finally deliver the bandwith they promised to their customers, but they never delivered, without making a significant investment.

Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

Well, there are a few independent ISP's out there that are better than the Bell & Robbers... sorry Rogers monopolies.

Currently I get 80 gigs of 6mbit service, and after that unlimited 3mbit. Even though I still have to watch my usage to get prime speeds, at least I don't have to pay something as unreasonable as 50cents/gig like it was in Canada.

But I remember my Bell connection very well. I called in the first day they offered 1mbit service, by the end of the year I got the letter saying I'm being kicked off because I use too much bandwidth. Paraphrasing, "this only effects 1% of our customers, so we don't give a damn about you".

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

surprisingly enough <sarcasm> the one German telco that wants in on the usage caps racket is the deutsche Telekom. Not only have they been infected by their ownership of T-Mobile usa but they also provide an ip television service. So it looks like the usual play of inconveniencing potential future competitors like Netflix and bolstering their own services. Rogers, bell I am looking at you Bastards. Usage caps should be simply illegal they are clearly uncompetitive. Regulators grow a spine.

Australia is also infected with Data Caps thanks to being on the bottom of the world.

Wow now that is cool. Bell Rogers could you have a look? There is a way for isps to innovate that actually makes customers life's better and doesn't try to suck more money out of them by artificially restraining their service.

I wouldn't put too much faith into anything Telefonica does. Even if their research division comes up with interesting ideas, their Internet service is known as one of the worst (if not outright the worst) in the markets they operate.

If I had to guess, I would say they want this technology to finally deliver the bandwith they promised to their customers, but they never delivered, without making a significant investment.

Well, I'm actually using a FTTH connection in Barcelona city from Telefonica. I have "unlimited" 100Mbps conection and it preforms at 110Mbps usually, so, it works perfect.

I also have an ADSL 10Mbps conection with telefonica in a small town 150Km away from Barcelona and it can go up to 9Mbps without problems.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

No, a large number of the ISPs in the USA have recently added data caps in the last year or two. For example, all the ISPs available here (AT&T, Mediacom, etc...) have switched from Unlimited to 150 GB cap for all users (no grandfathering!). More and more companies in the USA are switching TO caps, rather than away from them.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

Don't know what part of Canada you live but your generalization of the entire country is pretty ludicrous. There are lots of independent Internet providers out there, some of which have no data caps.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

They can do the same thing that BT in the UK does with its shared wifi thing (OpenZone?). The router knows whether packets are being generated on the LAN, or by external users as the two WiFi networks are distinct. Only local traffic need be counted against any caps or metering. If they're planning to do plan based ratios, they've clearly already partially solved that issue.

[quote="JPan"Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

Don't know what part of Canada you live but your generalization of the entire country is pretty ludicrous.[/quote]

What exactly are you trying to say. Rogers and bell are the same all over the country. Canada might be huge but it's not exactly heterogeneous and with 30m inhabitants not that huge of a market. Now quebec might be different no idea. Quebec is always different. Hell when I came to Montreal my phone started roaming.

Ah saw your comments about independent isps. Suppose you mean tecsavvy and Co.? They are nice if not exactly cheap (after all they still need to use bells and Rogers lines) the biggest problem however is that their service in general sucks. I have friends who switched to one of them and didn't have Internet for a month because of a bitch fest between Rogers and the target isp. Rogers and bell own the lines and don't make it easy on the small ones.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

The UK also has data caps but these are generally for free or cheap tariffs. Almost every ISP has a reasonably riced unlimited tariff as well.

[quote="JPan"Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

Don't know what part of Canada you live but your generalization of the entire country is pretty ludicrous.

What exactly are you trying to say. Rogers and bell are the same all over the country. Canada might be huge but it's not exactly heterogeneous and with 30m inhabitants not that huge of a market. Now quebec might be different no idea. Quebec is always different. Hell when I came to Montreal my phone started roaming.[/quote]

Rogers only operates as an ISP in Ontario and the Maritimes. Bell is focused in Ontario and Quebec. Videotron is in Quebec and very small parts of Ontario. Cogeco is scattered all over the place. And Telus pretty much rules the west in concert with Shaw.

The article mentions that security is a priority, and that's great. My question would be, since you can potentially be prosecuted for illegal activities being performed by someone else who is on your network, how can that be traced if dozens or even hundreds of people are using this shared connection? What protections would you as a consumer have if others that are now using your bandwidth use the shared network as a way to hide what they're going?

I imagine that the delay they mentioned in the article is related to deploying routers that can broadcast multiple SSIDs- that way your personal family network isn't used by your neighbours. Traffic from each network would be tagged by the router as it got trunked back to the ISP, so data metering and.or criminal liability would be kept separate.

[quote="JPan"Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

Don't know what part of Canada you live but your generalization of the entire country is pretty ludicrous.

What exactly are you trying to say. Rogers and bell are the same all over the country. Canada might be huge but it's not exactly heterogeneous and with 30m inhabitants not that huge of a market. Now quebec might be different no idea. Quebec is always different. Hell when I came to Montreal my phone started roaming.

Ah saw your comments about independent isps. Suppose you mean tecsavvy and Co.? They are nice if not exactly cheap (after all they still need to use bells and Rogers lines) the biggest problem however is that their service in general sucks. I have friends who switched to one of them and didn't have Internet for a month because of a bitch fest between Rogers and the target isp. Rogers and bell own the lines and don't make it easy on the small ones.[/quote]

This is exactly the problem. The big players own the networks, are forced to wholesale (or however it works) capacity to the smaller guys, but then when something breaks you can't just call Bell/Rogers/whoever and actually talk to the responsible company. No you need to call Teksavvy, who then calls Bell, who then tells them the F off because it must be their modem, etc etc. Not saying Bell doesn't try to offload the problem to the end user themselves but at least there's no third party involved. Had to deal with a couple of these situations over the years and its just brutal.

And Stalinistic regime is right. Yeah sure you can get 15Mbps FTTN service which is more than enough for most, but it only comes with 90GB of total bandwidth? Sure you can get unlimited for 15 bucks more a month but years of being used to this cap has beaten me into submission I guess--and I think it would enrage me even more to pay for the 'unlimited' just to see my connection get even more throttled once I pass the 'normal' 90GB of usage...

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

The UK also has data caps but these are generally for free or cheap tariffs. Almost every ISP has a reasonably riced unlimited tariff as well.

A lot of the soho/business providers use data caps, aaisp, zen, idnet, xilo etc they don't fall into what most people class as cheap broadband in the UK, for ex. I get 100 GB p/mth for 8am - 8pm hours, +150 GB 'free' for outside of those hours, £23 inc vat

No. My ISP like every other ISP has a clause making the customer responsible for all data on my network connection. Until someone either makes me immune or can guarantee creepy bald guy next door isnt a registered sex offender looking at kiddy pr0n. No.

Wow now that is cool. Bell Rogers could you have a look? There is a way for isps to innovate that actually makes customers life's better and doesn't try to suck more money out of them by artificially restraining their service.

I wouldn't put too much faith into anything Telefonica does. Even if their research division comes up with interesting ideas, their Internet service is known as one of the worst (if not outright the worst) in the markets they operate.

If I had to guess, I would say they want this technology to finally deliver the bandwith they promised to their customers, but they never delivered, without making a significant investment.

Well, I'm actually using a FTTH connection in Barcelona city from Telefonica. I have "unlimited" 100Mbps conection and it preforms at 110Mbps usually, so, it works perfect.

I also have an ADSL 10Mbps conection with telefonica in a small town 150Km away from Barcelona and it can go up to 9Mbps without problems.

I have tried other ISP (Jazztel and Vodafone) and they are way worse

Big cities are not representative of the state of their entire network (I've spoken to other Spaniards who had bad experiences with Telefonica).

Nor is the service you might experience in Spain representative of all the markets where they operate (which according to my experiences, and that of thousands of others, is awful)

Now I understand why Telefónica forced me to have WEP 128 that was automatically generated from the SSID. After I asked them to set up my own password (the router was password protected) they suggested I tell them what password I wanted over the phone. I switched ISP two weeks ago.

This is exactly the problem. The big players own the networks, are forced to wholesale (or however it works) capacity to the smaller guys, but then when something breaks you can't just call Bell/Rogers/whoever and actually talk to the responsible company. No you need to call Teksavvy, who then calls Bell, who then tells them the F off because it must be their modem, etc etc. Not saying Bell doesn't try to offload the problem to the end user themselves but at least there's no third party involved. Had to deal with a couple of these situations over the years and its just brutal.

And Stalinistic regime is right. Yeah sure you can get 15Mbps FTTN service which is more than enough for most, but it only comes with 90GB of total bandwidth? Sure you can get unlimited for 15 bucks more a month but years of being used to this cap has beaten me into submission I guess--and I think it would enrage me even more to pay for the 'unlimited' just to see my connection get even more throttled once I pass the 'normal' 90GB of usage...

When I was with a more local ISP for DSL, I eventually had some throttling issues even though I had unlimited bandwidth on Basic DSL (6Mbps/800Kbps). When I finally switched to another independent (start.ca) for cable I was consistently getting 20Mbps down. I don't quite know if it was the difference between ISP's or if it was between DSL/Cable.

Point is, I'm not having issues. I'm saving money even from the change between the two carriers, and I'm still getting some unlimited usage between off-peak times. My cap is 150GB, but even for FTTN 15/1 the download cap is now at 300GB.

All I can suggest is to do some due diligence and check out dslreports.com for comparisons between companies. View the forums to see how often there are issues. Your friend might have gotten the short stick but it doesn't always come around.

I'd love for Telefonica to implement this on my country. I live in a densely populated building, and the connection is slow as hell. Net neutrality regulations would ensure that they don't interfere with traffic.

I do wonder, though, how much lag would this introduce and how does balance traffic on a single connection... It's not like the TCP protocol allows data to go through one IP and receive the answer through another one.

So I had the idea to do this in a less...businesslike manner, a couple months back.

I set about cracking all the WEP networks near my parents' house, and using a DD-WRT enabled router, I created virtual interfaces which connected to 6 nearby networks. I had to create more virtual IPs to handle the fact that several of them were using the same subnets, but when I was done I sent them down via vlans to a box running pfsense and had it load-balance all 6 networks by simply round-robining each outgoing request.

It didn't really "share bandwidth" like these guys are saying they can do, but well...unless these guys also offer an outside service (VPN) to direct all traffic through before hitting the houses, then I don't really see how it's doing anything differently than what I put together. It's still a nice idea though.

Wow now that is cool. Bell Rogers could you have a look? There is a way for isps to innovate that actually makes customers life's better and doesn't try to suck more money out of them by artificially restraining their service.

I wouldn't put too much faith into anything Telefonica does. Even if their research division comes up with interesting ideas, their Internet service is known as one of the worst (if not outright the worst) in the markets they operate.

If I had to guess, I would say they want this technology to finally deliver the bandwith they promised to their customers, but they never delivered, without making a significant investment.

Well, I'm actually using a FTTH connection in Barcelona city from Telefonica. I have "unlimited" 100Mbps conection and it preforms at 110Mbps usually, so, it works perfect.

I also have an ADSL 10Mbps conection with telefonica in a small town 150Km away from Barcelona and it can go up to 9Mbps without problems.

I have tried other ISP (Jazztel and Vodafone) and they are way worse

Sorry but Telefónica is nothing but the Spanish equivalent of AT&T. The company was born as a natural monopoly financed by our taxes to build the early telecom infrastructure, and when competition was allowed to exist they became the worst company in prices and customer service, and yet was/is one the most profitable Spanish companies.The worst part is that the only economically reasonable options are the MVNOs because the "non-virtual" carriers have a nice oligopolistic mafia-like structure.

Please tell me that those people whose wifi is being used by their neighbours at night have an unlimited bandwidth plan?

We are talking about Europe and not the US of A. Data caps for home Internet is something that is a unique invention of the American oligopolies in telecommunications. Although some European isps see the money they make and want in on this evil business but let's hope competition does crush them.

Wasn't it Canada with the bandwidth caps? I'm in America and I've never had one

Canada is the devil with this but it looks like it's making the rounds in the US as well from what I hear. When I first came to Canada I first misread the usage cap for the bandwidth and thought well this is a good Internet service even if it's a bit expensive. After a couple seconds the full horror of the situation sank in. Internet wise Canada is a stalinistic regime.

+1 .. Shaw raised their standard internet plan to $65 a month with 100 GB cap a couple years ago. This is a 10 Mbit down cable modem plan. If you want to pay the old price of $40 a month you have to add TV. Telus (telco) held out at $35 a month, no cap for a long time, then raised it to $47, 100 GB, for 6 Mbit ADSL with just a little notice printed on the previous bill.. This just as their TV service was taking off. Went over to an independent DSL provider for $30, same speed, and a 300 GB cap. unlimited is just $5 more. There are options... Just difficult to set up, relatively-- most people don't want to buy their own modem and pay a $100 install fee (again from the telco for other-than-their's DSL).